Why Hearthstone’s Curse of Naxxramas can’t come soon enough

It’s time to shake things up in Blizzard’s killer card game.

By
Cam Shea

Confession - I’ve sunk more time into Hearthstone than any other game this year. Way, way more time. It’s become something of an obsession, and it’s done so against all the odds. I don’t ordinarily play card games. I don’t know anything about Warcraft. I didn’t even think I’d like it. And yet, here I am – still engaging with the game on some level every single day.

While the ‘meta game’ never stands still in Hearthstone, the major class archetypes have been set for some time now.

It speaks volumes to Hearthstone’s playability and depth, and I’m certainly enjoying it as much as ever. That said – and this is going to be particularly true for players who have been in since the closed beta – the game is going to benefit greatly when Curse of Naxxramas is released and players get an injection of new cards.

You see, while the ‘meta game’ (the classes and decks that are trending or falling out of favour across the wider player base, essentially) never stands still in Hearthstone, the fact of the matter is that all the major class archetypes have been set for some time now. There’s still room for personal expression, but for the most part the changes that players make to how classes are utilised are relatively small tweaks to existing builds. They’re archetypes for a reason after all – those decks have been playtested extensively, and the result is both as balanced and effective as possible.

The key to the success of Miracle Rogue.

Doing something radically different is fun to experiment with, of course, but it’s going to be relatively difficult to create something new that’s going to stack up in competitive play against old faithful.

This basically means that if you face a Rogue in ranked play, you know it’s either going to be a Tempo Rogue (establish and maintain board control and thus tempo) or – more likely – a Miracle Rogue (low cost spells, insane card draw and huge finishers).

Similarly, if you face a Warlock in ranked play, you know it’s either going to be Handlock (lots of big taunted-up minions like Mountain Giants and Molten Giants, paired with effective removal spells), Zoo (an aggro style that relies on swarming the opponent with low cost minions before finishing them off with charge minions and/or spells) or – occasionally – Murlock (where most minions are Murlocks and utilise Murlock-specific buffs).

The established nature of the deck archetypes means that there are some classes you’ll rarely see in ranked play. Priest and Mage, for instance...

This stability means that you pretty much know what to expect within a turn or two in any given game, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, you can make decisions based on the cards you think will be in an opponent’s deck, resulting in a really deep game of cat and mouse that – due to the random nature of the draws - plays out differently every time. On the other hand, well, there aren’t going to be that many surprises.

The established nature of the deck archetypes also means that there are some classes you’ll rarely see in ranked play. Priest and Mage, for instance, just aren’t played as much as other classes in ranked right now.

While classes that are perceived as weaker could obviously benefit from some new options, the reality is that more choice can only be a good thing for all the classes. It’s time for a big shake-up, in other words, and it’s going to be massive.

Hunters are still powerful, but pushing an Unleash combo back a turn had a big impact.

The meta game changed completely earlier this month, for instance, when Blizzard altered the cost of the Hunter card Unleash the Hounds from two mana to three (it started out last year at four mana funnily enough, so they’ve gradually been honing in on the final value). Prior to that change, Hunter was absolutely dominating. Tournaments were overrun by Hunters, while they were an absolute fixture on the ladder. The result of that one card being changed has been a period of turmoil in the game, with Hunter dropping right off, and other classes – Rogue and Shaman most notably – in ascendance.

It’s fascinating to see how the system attempts to balance itself. When one class is really dominant, players make adjustments to their decks to better counter that class or drop classes that have a poor match-up altogether. Shaman, for instance, is really weak against Hunter by virtue of its hero ability playing into Unleash the Hounds, so it dropped right off during the reign of the Hunter. And now it’s back. That wasn’t the only change, of course - when a dominant class suddenly loses popularity, it creates a power vacuum, and kicks off a turbulent period before a new equilibrium is found.

Naxx's new Shaman card.

So that was what happened when one card was changed. Now imagine what will happen when 30 new cards get added to the game. It’s going to be insane, and that’s why Curse of Naxxramas can’t come soon enough.

Of course, Naxx is more than just new cards. It adds a whole new single player side to the game – which you can read about here – but for the purposes of this article, let’s talk about what it’s going to mean for PVP. The expansion is structured into five wings, with a new wing released each week. Players will earn new neutral cards by defeating the bosses in those wings (as well as class-specific cards by beating the class challenges), so the upshot is that there will be a handful of new cards added to the pool every week for five weeks.

The cards will bring genuinely new strategies to the table too, as they’re all geared around a deathrattle theme.

By the end of it we’ll have 30 new cards, and eventually the meta game will find some kind of equilibrium, but those five weeks are going to see the game in a constant state of flux as players experiment with the new cards. New decks will be built and existing decks will be tweaked, then the following week there’ll be more new cards and everything changes again.

It’s going to be a hugely exciting – and potentially confusing – time to be playing Hearthstone. The cards will bring genuinely new strategies to the table too, as they’re all geared around a deathrattle theme – i.e. something that happens when a minion dies.

Oh hell yeah.

Old cards will suddenly be used in new ways and players will attempt to build OP deathrattle decks.

So far we’ve only seen ten of the new cards, but the possibilities are already tantalising, as some of these cards look very powerful indeed.